-The United Nations The health gap between poor and rich countries has narrowed significantly over the past two decades according to a United Nations report released today, which stresses that in spite of this progress, challenges still remain to achieve the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "Intensive efforts to achieve the MDGs have clearly improved health for people all over the world," said the Director-General of the World Health...

-The HIndu For all its influential reach, the IPL has done little to combat the existing stereotypes about women and done everything to reinforce them IPL 2013 is heading towards its high-intensity, high-octane, high-pitched finale. After the season's numbers have been crunched, the League will dissipate into general back-slapping, errors and omissions excepted. Except that 2013 has been a revelation in itself. While the IPL occupies "soap opera" prime time on TV for...

-IANS BJP Leader Varun Gandhi, who was acquitted of all charges of making hate speeches before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, "brazenly subverted the entire judicial process to get his name cleared," according to an expose by news magazineTehelka. The magazine on Wednesday said its "investigation proves that not only did Varun make the venomous speeches he is accused of, he has compounded the original wrong by brazenly subverting the entire judicial...

-The Hindu Kochi: Ten senior CPI(M) Leaders including party general secretary Prakash Karat, Polit Bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan and Leader of the Opposition V. S. Achuthanandan have approached the High Court of Kerala on Tuesday for quashing the criminal proceedings initiated against them by the Chief Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Thiruvananthapuram. The court had earlier issued summons against the petitioners following a complaint filed by by Neyyattinkara P. Nagaraj, which stated...

-The Hindu Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named Gulab Chand Kataria, a senior Leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from Rajasthan, in the supplementary charge sheet it filed on Tuesday in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case. The former Rajasthan Home Minister is the second prominent BJP Leader to be named in the case after the former Gujarat Home Minister, Amit Shah. Sessions court in Mumbai has issued...